On 30 Sep 2005, at 11:30, Listserv Manager wrote:

>Since my signup files are twice the recommended size, I either need to
>increase the number of files, or else clean these up. I choose to clean
>them up, but- it's a huge task. I don't even want to think about how long
> REGISTER .... OFF
>is going to take 275000 times (I've done 1000 or so and it was over a
>minute- maybe several). I've been talking with the good folks at support
>and they've been very responsive, but I wondered if anyone else has done
>this/has any ideas.

I started doing this by hand on VM/CMS in 1991 and by 1996 was forced to
do this every couple of months to keep Listserv from running out of memory.

Back then I just stopped the server, and then read the files with an XEDIT
macro that would delete all lines that didn't have a password, which was
delineated by, uh, HEX 15's I think.  Chucked the macro when we went to the
OpenVMS server, but I have, apparently done the same thing on that.  Stopped
the server, deleted the non-password user entries, and restarted without
problem.

So there are two points here... (1) yes, on these two OS'es you can just
chuck the stuff you don't want, although I suspect LSoft puts this on the
same spiritual level as handling serpents.  (2) You can figure out your
own program and method of deleting non-subscribers or you could compromise
for something as crude as just chucking everyone without a password which
I've done repeatedly without getting caught by the users.  ;-)  There may
be other factors, like all *user* lines (or something) without passwords so
look carefully before you leap and keep backups.
                                                            -Kary